Posts Tagged ‘Nazis’

The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland plans to open a new Jewish museum in a preserved baroque synagogue built in the 17th century in eastern Poland.

Great Synagogue in Leczna, in Lublin province, was mostly destroyed during and after World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s it was reconstructed, retaining the most important architectural elements of the former synagogue, including its wooden ceilings, the bimah and the Torah ark.

Since 1966, the synagogue has housed a regional museum, which has in its collection some valuable Judaica.

In 2013, the synagogue was transferred to Jewish community and was placed under the responsibility of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

The Foundation has proposed re-opening the museum in the building with a focus on the Jewish community of the town and plans to open the revamped museum in 2016.

It could become part of the Chassidic Route – the project implemented by the Foundation which traces the Jewish communities of southeastern Poland. The project has been joined by 28 communities.

One of the world’s top Nazi hunters has declared that Alois Brunner, a fugitive long sought for his leading role in the Holocaust, is likely dead.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, told the Sunday Express magazine in an article published Sunday that the Wiesenthal Center had received a tip in 2010 from a former German intelligence officer that Brunner, a key lieutenant to Adolf Eichmann, had died and was buried in Damascus, Syria.

Zuroff said that the Syrian civil war has made it impossible to verify the death but, given that Brunner would have turned 102 this year and the reliability of the intelligence source, the Wiesenthal Center had concluded that Brunner was most likely dead and thus removed him from this year’s list of wanted fugitives.

Zuroff confirmed the information in an email to JTA.

The Wiesenthal Center did not announce either its receipt of the 2010 tip or its decision to remove Brunner from the list. Zuroff told The New York Times that the issue never came up until the Sunday Express inquired.

Eichmann, the architect of the “Final Solution,” described Brunner as his “best man,” according to the Express. Zuroff told the Times that Brunner supervised the deportation to death camps of 47,000 Jews from Austria, 44,000 from Greece, 23,500 from France and 14,000 from Slovakia.

After World War II, Brunner evaded capture by the Allies, who mistakenly tried and hanged a fellow officer for his crimes, and made his way to Syria. He was tried and sentenced to death by France in absentia. In Syria, he reportedly lived in Damascus and advised Syrian dictator Hafez Assad — some believe on torture methods, according to the BBC.

In a 1985 interview with the West German newsweekly Bunte, Brunner said that his only regret from the war was that he did not kill more Jews. He also reportedly said in the interview that he had rented a room from a Jewish family in Egypt and that they were “quite nice people, really.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is backing a bill to be submitted by outgoing Communications Minister Gilad Erdan to cancel social security and other benefits for terrorists and “those who identify” with terrorism.

The Prime Minister already is getting flak from the United States for the “Jewish State bill,” which the U.S. State Dept. did not directly oppose but about which he noted to reporters on Monday, “We expect Israel to stick to its democratic principles.”

Indirectly reacting to the remark, Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Tuesday there is no contradiction between defining Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic state.

Israel is faced with Fifth Column terrorism, and the government recently re-instituted the policy of destroying terrorists’ homes, assuming the Supreme Court dos not get in the way by deciding that doing so would deprive terrorists of their basic rights”

The United States last week condemned the practice in Israel, but said it is perfectly okay for Egypt to destroy hundreds of homes of Arabs in Sinai to create buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt.

That is a matter of “self-defense,” said U.S. State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki, as reported here.

Destroying a home of a terrorist in eastern Jerusalem is different, she explained, because it involves borders that the United States does not agree with.

We are waiting to see if the State Dept. wants to stick its nose deeper into Israel’s domestic polices, but it is worth nothing that a Democratic party Congresswoman from New York last month said he will introduce a bill to stop Social Security payments to former Nazis.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, “It’s deeply disturbing and I’m deeply disturbed that these individuals continue to receive Social Security benefits even after the Justice Department identified them as Nazi war criminals,” speaking with Business Insider.

“If you’re a Nazi war criminal, you’re a Nazi war criminal. You should not be receiving Social Security benefits. Period,” she added.

And what about terrorists?

“’ll look at cutting off benefits to terrorists that are deported,” she added.

Germany’s ambassador to the Netherlands is slated to attend a commemoration at a cemetery where many SS soldiers are buried, according to a report Wednesday by the Dutch De Telegraaf daily that the envoy is aware that it contains the remains of SS soldiers.

Amb. Franz Josef Kremp is supposed to attend the commemoration on Nov. 16 at the Ysselsteyn cemetery near Eindhoven in the eastern Netherlands, a cemetery for victims of World War II. He is,

Herman Loonstein, founder of the Federative Jewish Netherlands group and a Jewish activist against commemoration in the Netherlands of Nazis and soldiers who fought for Germany, told the daily: “I think this is an affront. Mr. Kremp should not be presenting SS soldiers as victims. Jews were the victims.”

De Telegraaf reported that it had obtained a letter written by Kremp about the Ysselsteyn cemetery — where neo-Nazis have gathered in the past to honor Nazi soldiers buried there — in which he stated: “Among the dead resting here are German and Dutch war casualties, including Waffen SS.” The report did not say to whom the letter was addressed and in what context.

The Waffen SS was an elite Nazi unit whose men are responsible for the murder of countless Jews during the Holocaust.

Holland, which saw heavy battles between soldiers fighting for Nazi Germany and Allied forces, has many cemeteries where combatants from both camps are buried.

In recent years, Jewish groups like Loonstein’s have protested an emerging trend, in which commemorations are extended not only to the Allied forces’ casualties and Holocaust victims, but also to the German soldiers. Organizers of such events have justified them as promoting reconciliation.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, the Jewish community’s watchdog on anti-Semitism, has criticized this practice, warning it blurs the line between victim and perpetrator.

U.S. spy agencies hired at least 1,000 ex-Nazis during the Cold War, journalist and author Eric Lichtblau wrote in a new book, “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men.”

It was excerpted Monday in The New York Times and alleged that the CIA and other American agencies employed large numbers of Nazis as spies and informants and through the 1990s protected from deportation and prosecution some who were living in the United States.

Citing newly disclosed records and interviews, Lichtblau reports that the FBI and CIA knowingly recruited officials who had occupied high positions in Nazi Germany, including some known to be guilty of war crimes. One such spy was involved in the Lithuanian massacre of tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust; another worked closely with Adolf Eichmann. Several spies were rewarded with U.S. citizenship.

On several occasions, the book notes, U.S. intelligence officials refused to cooperate with the Justice Department’s Nazi hunters and urged them to drop investigations for fear of exposing their ties to American spy agencies.

The location of the gas chambers at the notorious Sobibor death camp has been revealed, Yad Vashem announced Wednesday.

On October 14, 1943 some 600 prisoners rose up in revolt and escaped from the camp. Most were recaptured or murdered, but 100 to 120 managed to survive. Of those, 60 made it through to the end of the war, when Allied Forces arrived to free the captives.

But a quarter of a million Jews were murdered at the death camp in Poland, where the Nazis worked hard to cover up their evil crime. After the uprising, the Nazis bulldozed the site and planted evergreen trees to conceal the mass graves.

Now, an archaeological dig has uncovered the truth nevertheless.

Dr. David Silberklang, a senior researcher at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust research said, “The discovery of the exact location of the gas chambers at the Sobibior Camp is a discovery of the utmost importance in Holocaust research.”

He said it was important to understand that “there are no remains from any Jews who worked in the area of the gas chambers, and therefore these findings are the only thing left from those who were murdered.” Silberklang said “a small window has been open into their daily suffering.”

Personal effects of the victims who lived and died in the tragedy have been found near the gas chambers. Among the items uncovered were jewelry – including wedding rings – and perfumes, medicine and utensils.

Silberklang said that for the first time the excavation taking place at the site would enable researchers would be able to better understand the murder process in the camp and what the Jews went through before their deaths.

(JTA) — New York City police are investigating the distribution of fliers marked with swastikas in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

A member of the Shomrim, a watchdog group affiliated with New York’s haredi Orthodox community, spotted the fliers on Bedford Avenue, a Jewish area of Williamsburg, on Monday evening, according to the JPUpdates news site. The group alerted the police.

Police are reviewing surveillance video to see if they can track the fliers’ distributor, JPUpdates said.

The fliers are marked with a swastika and the word “uber,” which roughly translates as “superior” in German.